


rage

by riddler42



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Abduction, Aftermath of Torture, Dissociation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Torture, but heavily implied ot3 so like, tagged as such, there's like...... no actual romance really happening here?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-26 01:51:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15653319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riddler42/pseuds/riddler42
Summary: Yasha may not know who's taken them, or why; but she knows the only thing that matters, and that's protecting her friends from their torturers.An exploration of Yasha's thoughts and mindsets during the abduction.





	rage

  
Rage.

It's the one constant in Yasha's life. Through everything she's experienced, everything she's lost, the people that she's found; it's always there, pulsing just below her ribcage, waiting. Waiting for her to call it up and let it overtake her, let it sing through her arms as she swings her blade and shrugs off every hit she takes -

She can feel it now, drumming insistently, reaching up her throat, waiting for a chance to explode. But it won't. Not until she lets it. She's in control.

She waits patiently behind bars, staring at nothing, her broad shoulders blocking entry into the cage. Her hands are bound, her mouth is gagged, but still she stands sentinel between their captors and her friends.

She can hear Jester struggling with the restraints, trying to speak through the gag, presumably attempting a spell. Tension makes the air as thick as mud, but Yasha can take it.

The cage door swings open. Yasha lunges.

She lashes out like a feral animal, and for an eon everything is chaos and confusion. She takes the hits they give, throws her weight around, and it's only when a dagger slips into her gut and out that she stumbles.

One of them shoves her back with a kick to the wound, and Yasha staggers back into the cage. Fjord cushions her fall with his body. The cage door swings shut.

She pulls herself up and sits upright, breathing through her nose. She probes at the wound in her side; hardly the worst she's dealt with. Then she looks over the others. 

They both look terrified. Fjord is hovering, doing his best to communicate something to her, but she can't hear anything over the blood still roaring in her ears. Jester's eyes are wide and wet and full of concern.

But they're unharmed.

Yasha shuffles to her knees and leans forward to put her forehead against Jester's. She looks at Fjord, and waits patiently for him to lean in too. They stay like that a while, sharing breath, unable to speak but bound together in mutual agony.

She'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.

Time passes in a blur. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and then pain; more waiting, more pain, and waiting again. At one point there is screaming from outside the cage. Fjord and Jester both stiffen at the sound, but Yasha ignores it. In her opinion, anything that distracts their captors is a good thing.

More time goes by. Yasha has no idea how long. Jester falls asleep on her shoulder, and Yasha is loathe to move her, but if the door opens again she needs to be able to get between them. She carefully shifts Jester over to Fjord, who moves to support her as best he can and gives Yasha a loaded look. Yasha looks back at him, and knows that he understands her.

Yasha doesn't sleep. Fjord does, eventually, his head drooping to rest on Jester's. Yasha stays awake, watching them, and she waits for more pain.

It doesn't take long.

The cage opens again and Yasha is up in an instant. There's a fierce blow to her side, right in the wound from the day before; she ignores it as best she can.

This time, though, when she tries to thrust herself into the cage door, between her friends and the danger, they're not trying to push her back. She's caught off guard by the brief lull, and she pauses, trying to get her bearings.

And then there is pain.

She clenches her jaw so tight she swears it's about to break. Her entire body is seizing, her muscles trying to tear themselves from her bones. She drops to her knees, but her rage keeps her up. Keeps her between.

There's muttering that she can't understand in front of her, and sobbing and yelling behind her, but it doesn't matter - all that matters is that she stays between -

Hands are grabbing her, now, and she's being pulled out. She tries to fight, nearly bites through her gag, hurls herself at the force pulling on her. She hits something solid and they both go down, hitting the ground hard. She bashes her head into them, and connects.

More hands grab her and pull her back. There's so much happening she can't keep track, but when she hears Jester scream - a high pitched, terrified sound - she loses it entirely.

Later, when she's manacled up tight and drifting in and out of consciousness, beaten within an inch of her life, she can't remember a single thing after hearing that scream. She's alone now, separated from the others, but there are sounds - quiet people sounds - all around her. She's sure they're somewhere close by; she can feel it, like a string tied around her heart, tugging in their direction. 

If they're not, she'll make the bastards who took them pay.

Time passes. She doesn't know how much. Wherever she is, it's dark and cold and it smells awful. None of that registers past the pain and the rage and the string tugging in her chest. 

But the singing does.

It's a sweet, clear voice, singing something surprisingly inappropriate. Yasha listens, lets the sound wash over her, and finds herself almost laughing at the bawdiest parts of it. 

It's only when the singer names the song's protagonist as Fjord that Yasha realises - it has to be Jester. She pays more attention, then, lets the notes sink into her bones and take her away for a moment.

Just a moment.

She dreams. The song continues, but changed; she can't understand the words, but it sounds like hope. There are other voices joining in. The other captives. Even Fjord's resonant baritone is there. But Yasha can't sing. If she opens her mouth, she will scream, and she can't let them hear her scream.

She dreams of Molly, pulling her head into his lap, and stroking her hair. She dreams of him braiding flowers in, all her favourites, and whispering something quiet to her - and then he's gone.

She wants to cry, but she knows it's just a dream.

Pain returns.

She takes it.

She can hear people talking, but she doesn't understand it. Refuses to understand it. She takes the beatings and the pain and the magic, but she doesn't say a word. She remembers sharing a look with Fjord, and hopes that he's protecting Jester where she can't.

She dreams again. Dreams that she can hear the other people around her crying. Sobbing. All around her. Footsteps echo past her cage, and the crying ceases abruptly; but when the footsteps fade, the crying slowly comes back.

Then she hears Jester singing again. Quieter than last time, but even more risque. Nobody else joins in, but the crying eventually stops. There's even a snort of laughter. 

The footsteps return. Jester stops singing. And then there's a sharp gasp of pain.

Yasha's asleep. It's just a dream. But her rage rises in her throat, and she hurls herself at the bars and snarls, and then the pain is back.

Every last drop of it is a drop not spent on the others. She savours it to the last.

The song starts again.

Not the ribald sailor's shanties Jester had been singing, but a lullaby. Yasha doesn't understand the words. She doesn't understand anything. But the tune is soothing, and Jester's voice means she's still alive and unhurt.

She must be unhurt. She couldn't sing like that if she's been tortured like Yasha's been tortured. 

(The part of Yasha that knows this is a dream thinks they're all dead, her included, and this is hell. But Yasha remembers hell, and it was far worse than this.)

Yasha dreams that she can see Jester's face, behind bars, bars on bars on bars. Her arm is reaching out, hampered by bars and manacles, hardly able to make it halfway. She's singing softly, and there are tears on her face.

Yasha dreams that she pushes through the sleep curse, and puts her own arm out to reach Jester, and for a moment their hands touch. She feels the string tug. She sees Jester smile. Hears her sing. Knows she'd die to protect that sound.

She slips away.

She drifts in and out of consciousness, never truly waking. There is pain, and noise, and singing; there is chaos and confusion and yelling. She dreams of a battlefield. She dreams of death, of a sea of blood reaching to her thighs, of a fiend taunting her on. She dreams of sinking her blade into his chest and watching the light drain from his eyes.

She dreams that their friends have come.

That Beauregard entered her cage first, and took off her chains and pulled her close. That Jester came to heal her, and touched her face with soft gentle fingers. That Molly stood behind them, his face cold, his eyes distant. That she reached for him, and he turned away.

She doesn't understand that part. It's her dream, she argues with herself. Why can't he hug her? Mollymauk would want to hug her.

She dreams that she's being taken somewhere new. Her mind conjures terror, more torture, worse than what she's already dealt with; but Jester is still with her, singing and soothing, and Yasha knows that wherever she is going cannot be worse than where she has been.

And then, finally, she wakes.

Alone.

She stumbles to her feet. She's barely awake, part of her still convinced she's dreaming, but she's alone and there are no manacles and she's not going to waste a moment.

She staggers out of the cart and finds herself surrounded by white.

And - there they are. All of them. Her friends. She searches first for Fjord and Jester, and seeing them is a balm on her scarred heart. She sees Beauregard and Caleb, Nott and - where is Mollymauk?

Her eyes land on a familiar coat. Elaborate, extravagant, exquisite; the colour of it stands out, stark against snow.

She stumbles forward, her friends quiet, and falls to her knees before the mound. Her shoulders shake. She feels a hand rest on one shoulder, and then the other. She clenches her jaw, hard, so hard she feels as if it will break.

And then she screams.

Wings burst forth from her, summoned by the sound as much as by the pain she's expelling. It takes forever and an instant, and she's quiet again.

Always so quiet.

Mollymauk is never quiet.

_Was,_ she thinks.

She hears her name.

It's both of them, Fjord and Jester, at the same time. She feels the string tug, and knows that to leave them will be agony, but thunder cracks in the distance and she cannot stay.

"I'll find you," she says, without looking at them - why make it any harder than it already is? - and turns towards the storm.


End file.
